Post by J-Dawg on Jun 24, 2011 17:44:32 GMT -8

Well given that you have a girlfriend I can guess the reason why... :-)Although for the most part, a gay bar is a gay bar. Some bars are filled with skinny young gays and other bars with older gruff gays with facial hair wearing leather, but they're all more or less the same. Funny thing that.

Post by J-Dawg on Jun 24, 2011 18:17:40 GMT -8

Maybe it's the wine, but tonight I'm reflecting on the importance of live performance for EDM acts. I listen to EDM at home / in the car a lot more often than I go to EDM shows, so I tend to de-emphasize live shows. If I'm at a club and the DJ is doing a good job I have fun no matter whether (s)he's a big name or not.

The EDM acts I've made a point of seeing live, though, split pretty quickly into two categories:1) Transcendent2) Meh

And it seems to have a very low correlation to their studio work (example: Excision).

What are everyone elses thoughts? How much does the live performance of an EDM act influence your opinion of their music?

Post by J-Dawg on Jun 24, 2011 20:43:12 GMT -8

Thanks Know. I figured I'd start sharing my EDM experiences and see if people cared or not. I figured this board would be a good place to have this conversation. Meeting all of you at Sasquatch was fantastic, and I'm very interested in your input on EDM. Plus, I figure folks like Souly and HG might find this discussion useful as they seem to be new to the EDM scene.

As an aside, I checked the Coachella boards, and.... yeah... won't be back anytime soon. As much as we can all be assholes on here, they've got us beat x10. There was about 14 pages of 'I HATE SKILLEX HE'S TEH SUXOR' which is all good except nobody bothered to post a rational reason for *why* they hate Skrillex.

Love or hate this board, people at least have a reason for what they feel and attempt to express the reasons instead of just the love / hate.

Post by s0ul8 on Jun 24, 2011 21:41:35 GMT -8

J-Dawg I get exactly what you are saying about the show being a lot different from the recorded music. I'm pretty new at the EDM stuff and I have no idea what makes anyone a good or bad DJ. I also can't really listen to the recorded music for long periods of time. If it's really loud or in my headphones that's a different story, but I usually don't have it playing in the background. That being said, I had the time of my life at that show, it didn't even compare to rock or indie shows I've been to. It's just different, and I loved it.

I'd also like to thank you for your insight into the EDM scene. I'd really like to know more about it and you seem to know what you're talking about.

You still need to answer my question about the weird gas masks though. That's going to drive me crazy.

Post by J-Dawg on Jun 24, 2011 22:44:14 GMT -8

Others on here are definitely far more experienced than I. I'm just a loud mouth who doesn't know when to shut up.

The gas masks thing... I honestly don't understand it myself. In university I saw it more often (usually anarchists). I've also noted it as a fetish in certain circles, but can't tie it back to the rave / EDM scene in a meaningulf way.

My take is that it's a sort of costume like any other*, and that's how I choose to view it. I could honestly give you a much better response re: soothers and the like than gas masks.

If anyone else on here can school us I'd love to learn.

*drastically oversimplifying what I know of anarchists in this assessment.

Post by s0ul8 on Jun 24, 2011 22:49:18 GMT -8

Someone I drunkenly asked said something about them putting vicks vapor rub on the inside of them. I assumed that wasn't true though. Kind of like when this guy told 14 year old me that the 'doing' of all drugs involved putting them in a condom.

Post by Shaxspear III Esq. on Jun 25, 2011 11:24:33 GMT -8

Yeah the reason for it is for vapor rub. It's an ecstacy thing. It used to be really popular back when I went to parties. When you're rolling it just really opens up your sinuses and kind of gives you a rush like "poppers" (amyl nitrates) but without any of the side effects. Its also really handy if you're dancing beside a person who forgot their deoderant. I use it when I'm working and I have a rancid smelling patient.

Post by Shaxspear III Esq. on Jun 25, 2011 13:27:00 GMT -8

Oooookay it's slow at work so I'm going to go through some of the stuff I have listened to over the years. I fully expect people not to like a lot of the genres and that's ok. Some of them are old and were made before EDM had all the fancy toys for production so they can sound very "simple".

I have to start with Kraftwerk. All EDM today....yes ALL, is mostly thanks to Brian Eno and Kraftwerk. They are the true pioneers of the genre. They were my gateway drug to EDM because I used to like a lot of industrial (NIN, Skinny Puppy, KMFDM, Ministry etc) and they also have a lot of roots from Kraftwerk. Some of the other bands I used to listen to that had an influence to EDM but more specifically the rave scene, were bands that came out of England (New Order, Happy Mondays, Stone Roses). Before going to my first rave my early EDM exposures were mostly limited to Chris Sheppard pirate radio mixes. For anyone not Canadian or too young to remember, Chris Sheppard was Canada's most commercially available club DJ. He would put out these CD mixes advertised on MuchMusic (Canada's MTV). While I would consider some of the songs in his mixes classics now - back then they were cheesy as all hell.

(Insert Gramma rant here) Kids have it so easy these days. There was no google or search engines. The internet was a shell of what it is now. When I was a teen I literally had to go out and physically find new music. If you didn't live in a huge epicenter of a city, you found out about new music from word of mouth and magazines.

Then in 1995 three things happened that changed my life:

1) A friend gives me a CD that he says I have to listen to. I took that CD home and was blown away. It was a sound I had never really heard before and I was hooked. That album was Exit Planet Dust by the Chemical Brothers, and it made me go buy a new stereo system for my sweet ass 1988 Ford Taurus.

2) Laugh all you want. When you are a 16 year old kid that loves computers, this movie was the shit. The soundtrack was also stellar. There were a few other movies in the near future that brought some great new music to my ears such as Trainspotting and Spawn.

3) I went to my first rave. I was on acid walking around downtown with some friends when we heard a thumping. We came across a building with a few people in a line up. We asked around and were told there was a party going on and it cost $5 to get in. High on acid with nothing better to do, we went inside. It was an old empty office building with no furniture inside. There was a simple light set up with some strobes, a fold out table with a Dj spinning vinyl records, and about 200 kids all having the time of their lives. Met some amazing people and started going to raves almost every weekend.